Hero is early 30s WG reg. New to table. (covers)

V is older WG, but by no means OMC. Far from it - one of the more aggressive players at the table, from what I've seen. I don't think he's particularly loose with PF hand selection, though. (~$250)

V (UTG+1) opens to $12. Kinda small for this table. 2 callers in MP/LP. Hero calls from BB with 9 7.

Flop ($48): J T 5

Hero checks, V bets $30. Folds to Hero. Hero contemplates whether he should call or raise. I believe that I would have to raise very large to fold out any overpair, and I have no idea what V would do with hands like AQ/AK, with out without diamonds. Hero calls. (Comments welcome)

Turn ($108) 8

JACKPOT. Hero?

Nice. Go ahead and bet (~$50) to act as if you are repping the flush. If there is any chance he'll fold, check/call, but I doubt you'll get much on river either way unless he hits a higher flush or fh

I think check/raising is way too strong.

If you bet $50, hes calling if he has the Ad or Kd, but if hes one of the more aggro players at the table, he isnt checking behind if he has the Ad or Kd so I would check raise here. Just make the check raise small enough that he thinks he cant fold.

Why check/call the turn? Hes gonna check behind on the river most times. You can combat that by check/calling the turn and leading the river but if you are going to lead the river, you might as well get that amount of money in on the turn by check raising.

Either way its doubtful you are getting any more money unless he has the As or Ks or a set/2 pair.

You gotta get some money in on the flop. You have lots of equity and many players in the pot. I'd lead the flop and be ok getting it in if anyone goes nuts.

As played, you should have check/raised the flop. Good chance of winning with 9 high, and if he calls you have tons and tons of equity to back you up. That's a key element of good bluffs. Back them up with equity.

If you play passively on the flop, then half or more of your equity evaporates if the turn is a blank. Then what? You have to just check/call down with a hand you know is way behind, and hope you hit. That's what slot machines are for. This is poker.

Once I see this flop, I'm jamming money in any time it's my turn. I'm gonna make a hand about half the time. And I'm gonna win with 9 high when my opponent folds by the river some other % of the time. Altogether you shoudl be winning the pot some 70-90% of the time if you just keep firing.

I'm open to the idea that I should have c/r the flop. As stated in the OP, I almost did exactly that, but then determined (whether right or wrong) that I didn't have the FE to do so on this board unless I raised huge (I don't think he's folding an OP unless I jam, and even then he might not). His b/c range also likely includes many of the unpaired hands in his range that we might otherwise normally target (KQ/AQ/AK, a non-insignificant portion of which are diamonds and have us crushed).

I think it's pretty clearly a c/c.

The only way we get his stack is if the turn card improved his hand or else the river card improves it. If we bet into him, we may eliminate the possibility of him spiking the river and we don't want to do that.

I.e. the worst possible result is we bet and he folds. Avoid the worst possible result.

He will bet a lot of his range in this spot. He may check back with a big singleton diamond, that we might have gotten additional value from, and that's probably more than 10% of his range. But on the other hand, he may put out a "feeler" or semi-bluff type bet with those hands.

So? If things were face up and reversed -- he shoved and showed you an overpair, you'd still call. Getting it in now is +EV. I don't really care if he folds or not.

Against those hands you probably have a 1 or 2% shot at the Bad Beat Jackpot. Makes anything you do profitable.

Whether or not the amount is actually "half or more," it will "evaporate" if the turn is a blank. Period. That doesn't depend on what we do on the flop.

And the fact is that we often have MORE FE OTT.

And another fact is that we sometimes pick up additional outs OTT that dampen the loss of card equity to a small amount.

The non-sequiturs are in bloom today.

Meh, semantics. but ok, you got me. Non sequitur - guilty. I think you know what i meant, I think you know that I know that our actions on the flop don't influence which cards come on the turn.

Trying to spin fractured syntax into 'poker ignorance' is kind of a stretch though. Keep tryin'


Is that a good thing? I'd hate to spike the 8 of diamonds and get to the turn having lugged all that fold equity with me.

Oh wait.....


So you're making your big semi-bluff move on the turn?

I'm not seeing it. I'd rather make my biggest moves when I have the most equity. Putting money in on the flop here is going to yield much more EV than putting money in after the turn bricks.

Putting money in with 50% equity >>> Putting money in with 25% equity

So you made an assumption, and then you used that assumption to prove itself. Awesome. Santa Claus does exist; I saw him at the Department Store.

The FE we can harvest OTF is a function of the pot size OTF. Likewise the FE on the turn and river. Any FE we get OTR is A LOT more valuable than what we can pick up OTF.

And there are NUMEROUS examples of card equity shrinking from 50% to 38%, rather than 25%. But I guess what you said was true because you said it, right?

Fold pre, being OOP sucks and this is why - you hit a straight flush and it's still a question of the best way to play it.

On the turn I would either lead $40-50 or check and evaluate depending on what villain my read of the villain.

God forbid we play any hand outside the top 10% from the blinds or in EP when given a silly price to do so. Because we're all just position robots and can't have a discussion about what to do in the 50% of cases when we do not have position.

Position is very important. But it's not the be all end all. Anyone folding this hand pre would be the nittiest of nits.

This entire site is full of nits. Im fairly tight preflop and Ive seen enough "fold preflop" posts to boggle my mind.

Apparently nobody here calls a raise unless they are set mining. IMO that a sign of weak hand reading and weak post flop play.

I feel that you are putting him on too narrow of a range, OP, if you are concerned to getting him off an overpair.

The check raise semi bluff on this board is your attack to fold out all better hands, AJ, JK, QJ, AT and so on. There are so many more combos than just Overpairs.

In this instance though, i like only calling as a lot of over cards that would be good to barrel give V more equity in form of 2 pair, straights, straight draws, pairs and so on.

As played I dont like leading out because you will fold out his bluffs and only get a call from a lot of hands that bet/call, including all Adx, higher flushes, and so on.

I would c/c the turn and reevaluate the river, if a diamonds comes shipt it. If he bets big enough to commit on the turn we can already ship it.

Results:

Hero checked, V bet $55. Hero thought about 5 seconds, V volunteers "I have about $150 behind." Hero then shoves, V tank folds.

Villain may not have had anything in which case it doesnt matter how much your check raise is, but based on stack size, this was the perfect spot for a min check raise. He can never fold if he has a big diamond.

Witht his statement, I would have only called.

Statements like that tend to mean that Vs are weak. Check Zach Elwood Poker Tells series for this kind verbal tell.

It is a clear indication of a weaker hand/part of his range.

I'd like to take this hand as a good time point out the difference between two very very different (but close) concepts:

1) "This hand can be played profitably in this spot with these stack sizes."

2) "I can play this hand profitably, with my skill set, reads, tendencies, and against this villain given any other dynamics."

In 1: We (mostly) know that there is a mathematically proven +EV way that this hand could be played without taking into account too many other factors. Ste mining for example: We do need to know that villains will always stack off with over pairs, won't fold on scary boards, overvalue 1p type hands. There isn't really a whole lot else that we need to know.

In 2: We might have a hand that has a proven way to play it such that it is +EV, but it might require us to be able to know other things such as our villain always fires less than half pot sized bets with less than top pair, always same bets his draws on the turn when he barrels a blankish card, will fold everything less than top two pair to 3 streets of aggression, has a weak sizing pre flop that he uses 95% of the time when he has a sc or s1g.

Note: These factors are still math, but they just require more math. We need to know how often his random hand will flop better than ours. How much we will need in our stack to bluff him off top pair. How much we can expect to win when we hit two pair. How often he will have a hand that can actually pay us off when we hit two pair. How often he will have less than two pair, but will still continue to call us down on the flop and turn but fold the river because he had something else to go along with it.

Other intangible factors can also be present here. Does he have timing tells, verbal tells, physical tells? Is he on tilt? Does he view you as an uber nit or a super lag?

For any of these different ideas we can turn a playable hand into an unplayable hand. We could turn a breakeven type hand into a solid money maker.

This brings us the crux:
What many posts are lacking is a clear sense of reads, history, and other things that all boil down to knowledge.
With this knowledge there are a lot of hands that could likely make profitable and many of the posters who say "lol at folding pre flop" might have that knowledge on many of their villains. However, when other people come in here and say "fold pre" it's because we don't have the tools that we need to make these decisions.

As a result, we tell you to fold pre. We only have to tools to analyse or help that you give us. So if you give us no reads, then we assume you have no reads. So we tell you to fold.

Think about that next time you are posting a hand and you see someone say "fold pre" and you wonder why.
Maybe you didn't give us anything to work with so we assume you know nothing about your self, your villains, your table, or any of the other important factors that could make something playable into unplayable and vice versa.

Preflop is fine. Hero gets over 30:1 IO and has good relative position on the preflop raiser. It's a little borderline because it's always harder to get paid oop. There's nothing wrong with folding, though calling is better.

I would check-raise the flop. It's true villain has a lot of pair+overcard, broadway draws, overpairs, two pair, and sets in his range. He is unlikely to fold most of these hands since he has significant equity. We have about 48% equity against a range of TT+/broadway hands. Only suited diamond AK/AQ are a complete disaster. We need very little FE, if any, to make c/r profitable. I'd just shove. The sizing is a bit awkward to c/r to around $100 and shove all turns. I'd be happy to win it right here with 9-high. It might be hard to get his stack if we hit the turn and he can fold some of his weaker hands.

As played, I think you have to c/c or lead out small. Villain is an aggressive player. You can expect him to fire again or induce a raise. A c/r blows off all hands worse than a K-high flush.

c/r flop to $80 and shove any brick turn if called, bet less if you get there. I'd want to leave a little less than PSB for V to call off on the turn if it bricks to make a tougher call, and also make it tougher for him to fold if you bet like $65-80 on turn if you get there.

As played min-raise turn, shoving makes it too easy for him to fold a hand like AJ/QQ on such a scary wet board. It's really hard for people to fold to min-raises, it's an ego thing.

It's pretty bad to check raise this hand on the flop. It's not as good as it looks.

As played I guess don't mind clicking back the turn.


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I like the turn check, but I think that shove is horrible. You have the absolute nuts in this spot. If he has nothing then you want to give him the opportunity to make a mistake or try to bluff. If he has a decent holding such as a set or the A you want to give him the chance to improve on the river.

I think you should just flat call. When you check shove on the turn it just looks super strong and I think villain will only ever call with a high flush, maybe a set.

Can you explain more? I agree non-nut combo draws can be dangerous. I would not c/r if there was a bet-call or multiple players yet to act. The threat of domination by a better draw or set becomes much higher.

In this case, hero is heads up against an utg+1 raising range. Villain only crushes us with three combos, AK/AQ/KQ diamonds. Hero is 35% against JJ/TT and around 45% against JT/pair+over/overpair hands. Hero is the favorite against non-diamond AK/AQ/KQ.

I also might be more inclined to call on the flop if I was in position. Hero is oop, making it much harder to get paid when he hits and harder to bluff when he misses. I think this is a fairly straight forward c/r. I'm interested to hear why not.

When you check raise, you are going to get shoved on fairly often, and have roughly 40% vs overpairs/sets/two pair/better draws. You'll have to call it off at that point given pot odds, but do you think that's the best we can do? Hope to get a fold or get it in as an underdog?


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Which is why i'd c/r shove. I agree the stack size is awkward. A pot-sized c/r would be $140, leaving villain about $90 if he calls. I'd rather gii now and max FE with a draw.